"I’ll do it."

He said and raised his gaze.

"I’ll build the Screamer."

Callighan’s expression didn’t change much. But something shifted at the corner of his mouth, the faintest suggestion of a smile, the kind that didn’t reach his eyes but meant he was satisfied.

When Gaspar had wrung the information out of Zakthar about the three stones housed in the Tri-Core Matrix, Callighan had listened to all of it carefully and quietly, the way he did most things. The Fire Spitter had its uses, raw, destructive, obvious. The Frost Walker too. But neither of them had held his attention for long. It was the third one. The Screamer. That was the one he kept coming back to in the quiet hours when he was thinking through the shape of things.

The ability to attract Infected. To command them. Through sound.

The plan that had assembled itself in his mind after that was neither complicated nor gentle, which was generally how his best plans went. He would use the Screamer to push a wave of Infected directly into the Boardwalk Community, hundreds of them, flooding in through every gap and entrance at once, turning the whole place into controlled chaos in a matter of minutes. And in that chaos, in the panic and the noise and the scramble to survive, he would finally get to Marlon. Pull him out of the wreckage while everyone around him was too busy dying to stop it.

Whatever weapons Marlon had managed to get his hands on through Zakthar, and Callighan knew about those too wouldn’t matter much when the dead were pouring in from every direction. There wasn’t a weapon made that could hold back that kind of tide.

It was also, if he was being honest, partly what Gaspar wanted. The man had developed a particular interest in seeing Marlon dealt with ever since Marlon had nearly put him in the ground using a Starakian weapon. Before that, Gaspar hadn’t carried any real grudge, he’d actually found Callighan’s fixation on Marlon mildly amusing, the way someone finds another person’s obsession entertaining from a safe distance. Then Marlon had nearly killed him, and suddenly it wasn’t so funny anymore. These days Gaspar was noticeably more cautious, noticeably more willing to let Callighan’s slower, more calculated approach do the heavy lifting. But with the Screamer now in reach, the slower approach was about to get a lot shorter.

"How long?" Callighan asked, his eyes level and serious.

Zakthar exhaled through his nose, already working through it in his head. "I can’t give you an exact number. The Stone’s been used, whoever had it before ran it down completely, it’s got nothing left in it right now. I still have one Nexon Battery so I can start recharging it, but that process alone could take days. Maybe a week. Maybe longer." He paused. "And the Stone by itself isn’t enough anyway. The Screamer doesn’t just work on its own, it needs equipment around it to function the way you want it to."

"What kind of equipment?"

Zakthar glanced at him. "You want to send Infected toward a specific location? Direct them, control the direction of the sound?"

Callighan gave a single short nod.

"Then I need copper wiring. Metal conductor strips. Radio transmitter units, at least two, preferably three. Something capable of broadcasting at range and at volume. Specific tools to put it together properly." He kept listing, ticking things off in his head. "Other materials depending on what’s available, but those are the core of it."

Callighan’s gaze drifted briefly to the Tri-Core Matrix Box sitting against the wall. "I thought that thing was the delivery system for the stones. Why are you building something separate?"

Zakthar followed his look. A slight frown pulled at his features as his eyes moved across the box, studying it from across the room with the particular expression of someone finding something wrong with something they built.

"The Fire Spitter stone is at about half capacity. The Frost Walker is nearly dead, close to empty. I could use the Nexon Battery to try and restore both, but that’s days of charging just on its own. And beyond that..." He trailed off, still looking at the Matrix, the frown deepening. "The Matrix Core itself has been compromised. The internal structure — something’s off with it." He paused. "It’s almost like someone got into it with some kind of purpose. Knew what they were doing when they tampered with maybe..."

"Tampered with?" Callighan repeated, a slight edge coming into his voice.

"That’s what it looks like." Zakthar glanced up at him. "But it’s not something just anyone could do. You’d have to know these systems well, know what you were looking for and what to touch." He tilted his head. "Where did you get it?"

Callighan gave him a long, flat look that answered nothing and communicated clearly that the question wasn’t going to be answered.

Zakthar got the message.

"Write me a list," Callighan said, his tone closing the subject off cleanly. "Everything you need, in order of priority. You’ll get what’s on it. Then you build the device." He let the instruction sit for a moment before adding, quieter: "And when it’s done and working, you’re free. You can go to your companion."

Zakthar’s jaw shifted. Some of the tension in his shoulders moved, not gone, but redistributed.

Then he raised his eyes again.

"I want the girl as well."

Callighan blinked, the closest thing to surprise he typically showed. "What girl?"

Zakthar’s gaze was steady and serious, no room in it for negotiation. "The one carrying the Dullahan Symbiote. I know you have her. She’s dangerous, not because she wants to be, but because that thing inside her will make her dangerous whether she wants it or not." He held Callighan’s gaze without flinching. "Hand her over to me when this is done. I can help her. Maybe even save her."

Callighan looked at him for a quiet moment. Then the same thin curve returned to his mouth, not warm, not cold. Just the expression of a man who had just been handed something he hadn’t expected and was already thinking about what it was worth.

"Fine," he said simply. "Once the device is built and does what I need it to do, you can take her."

He turned toward the man waiting near the door, who had been standing so still he’d practically become part of the wall.

"Get the list."

"Yes, Callighan." The man nodded and straightened up, reaching for something to write on.

Callighan walked out of the room and let the door fall shut behind him. He moved through the top floor at his own pace, descending the stairs. By the time he reached the ground floor lobby, the building already felt different, a shift in the air, a change in the noise level. A group of armed men when something unexpected had just landed on their doorstep.

Then one of his men came almost running around the corner, nearly colliding with him.

"Callighan!" The man’s voice was tight and breathless. "Someone came up, he’s got one of our girls. He says he has Lucy."

Something moved in Callighan’s eyes.

Quick and brief, barely there.

Then he was moving.

He followed the man out through the lobby and into the open, and the scene assembled itself in front of him as he walked, most of his men already outside, fanned out across the street with weapons up, guns trained in one direction with the focused, nervous energy of people who weren’t sure whether to shoot and were waiting for someone to tell them. One of them was being walked away to the side, a hand pressed against his arm just below the shoulder, the fabric dark and wet. The man who’d taken the bullet wasn’t making much noise about it, which meant it wasn’t catastrophic, but his face was pale and tight.

Callighan glanced at them as he passed.

Then looked ahead.

Two figures.

A young man and a woman.

He recognized the woman immediately, Penny, her frame trembling in the young man’s grip, his arm locked across her throat from behind, her body pulled close and angled to put her squarely between him and every gun currently pointed their way. Her eyes were wide and glassy with fear, her hands hovering at the arm across her neck.

But it was the young man Callighan found himself looking at. Really looking at.

He was young, late teens, maybe just crossing the threshold into something else, it was hard to say. The kind of age where most people still wore their uncertainty somewhere on their face. But this one didn’t. His eyes were a cold, flat gray, and they had a quality to them that didn’t match the rest of his years, not hard exactly, but settled.

Callighan had seen those kinds of eyes before. Usually they belonged to men twice this kid’s age.

He reminded himself, briefly, that this was the apocalypse. And then reminded himself immediately after that even accounting for that, this particular young man was not ordinary.

"Are you Callighan?"

The voice was cold, carrying across the distance between them without needing to be raised.

This wasn’t what Ryan had planned for when he’d moved on Penny. He’d caught her, moved fast, gotten clear, and then the shouting had started, and the name Callighan had cut through it like a signal flare. And the man who had walked out of that building moving like he owned every square foot of ground he stepped on had answered to it.

So this was him.

"I am," Callighan replied, his eyes steady on Ryan’s.

A beat of silence passed between them as Ryan widened his eyes hearing that it was really him.

"I assume you’re the one who took Lucy," Callighan said. "Is she dead?"

Ryan’s jaw tightened. "Not yet." He held Callighan’s gaze without blinking. "Whether she stays that way depends on what you say next."

Something shifted at the corner of Callighan’s mouth. He couldn’t entirely help it. The kid was standing in the middle of a street surrounded by men with guns pointed at him, holding a woman hostage, making demands of someone who had every reason and means to have him shot. And he was doing it with the composure of someone conducting a business transaction.

Bold.

Genuinely, surprisingly bold.

"Go ahead," Callighan said.

Ryan didn’t hesitate. "Mei, the black-haired girl Gaspar took. Where is she? How is she?"

Callighan turned it over for just a second and then the image surfaced cleanly.

The American-Asian girl.

The brace and fierce one.

"Mei, yes. She’s fine. She’s in my custody," he replied.

"How fine," Ryan said, his eyes narrowing by a fraction, something pressing behind the words that he was clearly working hard to keep out of his voice.

He was holding himself back. Callighan could see it. Coming here had been a risk and Ryan knew it. But he’d done it anyway, which said something about what the girl meant to him.

And Ryan was definitely holding back from pouncing onto Callighan...

"You’re worried about her," Callighan said, something almost gentle in the observation.

"Is she fine?" Ryan asked again, not biting at the comment.

Callighan held his gaze for a moment longer than necessary. Then, simply: "She is."

Ryan absorbed that. "I want her back."

"And I want Lucy back," Callighan said. "I trust she’s been treated well, same as I’ve treated your companion."

"She’s fine," Ryan said, a short nod accompanying the words. He paused, something shifting slightly in his expression, not softening, exactly, but recalibrating. "She told me you’re a man of your word," he added.

"I am," Callighan confirmed, no performance in it.

Ryan’s grip on Penny didn’t loosen, but something behind his eyes did, just marginally, just enough to show he was listening now in a different way than before.

"I want your word," he said, and despite how cold and level his voice remained there was something underneath it, something vulnerable and almost quiet. "That Mei will be safe. That nothing happens to her."

Callighan didn’t pause. Didn’t think it over. "She will be safe," he said. "I don’t harm girls."

It was a specific distinction, and he meant it as one. In his mind Mei was still a girl, young, not part of whatever was happening between the adults in this city. Same as the young man standing in front of him, technically.

Ryan heard the sincerity in it. Maybe it was Lucy’s word carrying weight alongside it, maybe it was something in Callighan’s voice that didn’t leave room for doubt but either way, the tension that had been wound so tight in his chest since long before he’d crossed into this street shifted and released, just a little. Enough to breathe against. Mei was alive. Mei was unhurt. And the man who had her had just given his word in front of witnesses.

Ryan pulled in a slow breath through his nose.

"If I bring you Lucy," he said carefully, "you give me Mei?"

"If you bring Lucy back safe and sound," Callighan said, "I give you Mei. You have my word."

Ryan’s hand, the one wrapped around the grip of the handgun he’d been holding throughout the entire exchange tightened involuntarily. Not in threat. In something closer to relief that he hadn’t let himself feel yet and was only just now starting to.

"Tomorrow," he said. "Same time, same place. I’ll bring Lucy."

"Tomorrow, same hour," Callighan said evenly. "Mei will be here."

And Ryan smiled. It wasn’t a warm smile, it was too tired and too tightly wound for that but it was real, and it carried both relief and something else underneath it. A quiet, private satisfaction that this had gone the way he’d needed it to.

Then Callighan blinked.

Everyone blinked.

Ryan was gone.

Penny too.

One second they were there, the next, the space they’d been occupying was just empty air and silence.

The reaction moved through the group like a current.

"What—"

"The hell?!"

"Where did he—"

"Find him! He was just—"

Men scattered in every direction at once, some running toward the spot, others fanning out down the street, heads swiveling and voices overlapping in the sudden chaos of thirty people trying to process something that shouldn’t have been possible. They checked doorways and alleys and side streets and found nothing, because there was nothing to find.

Callighan didn’t move.

He stood where he was, looking at the place Ryan had been standing a moment ago, his eyes settled and thoughtful. The noise around him didn’t seem to reach him. He was somewhere else in his head already.

After a moment, the corner of his mouth curved.

He turned around and walked back inside.